Beneath the Darkest Sky Read online

“Remind me what he’s like again,” I said.

  “A perfectionist. Rather serious-minded, but knows how to kid. Likes the finer things. Much finer! Even drives a sports roadster. Comes from a very influential family in Philadelphia. A Yale man. He’s made quite a reputation for himself over the years by establishing relationships throughout Europe. He even met Lenin back in 1919.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, he was part of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, but he visited Soviet Russia on a hush-hush mission. He was long thought to be considered for a posting whenever America and the Soviet Union continued relations.”

  “I wonder how he’s taken to Stalin.”

  “I shall soon find out,” he said. “I’m sure he’s made every effort to establish a relationship. Bullitt is a workaholic. I’m not sure he’s much of a delegator, as he’s prone to doing everything himself. He’s damn smart. But I’m anxious to see how the staff is functioning. Anyway, he and I have a good relationship, one established off and on over the last ten years.”

  Moments later we headed down Mokhovaya Street and approached the hotel, which was on Manezhnaya Square, across from the Kremlin. The entire area was breathtaking, a far cry from the log houses, dirt roads, and cobblestone alleyways we’d ridden past. This was the heart of Moscow, and every building looked ancient, powerful—even magical.

  “I heard,” said Bobby, “that Lenin actually made his home here at this hotel for a few days back when the Kremlin was being repaired from damages. He stayed in room 107. As you can tell, I have been in constant communication with staff members here since before we left Haiti, trying to learn all I could before we arrived.”

  “Well, stop. You’re getting my history bug all worked up.”

  “Okay, Press.” He pointed to a five-story building next to the hotel. “That building is called the Mokhovaya. It is where all of our embassy staff has apartments and offices, our brand-new chancery. I’d heard it was finally complete, but now I’m not sure. Looks like they’re still working, at least on the exterior. Apparently Bullitt is in negotiations to have a permanent embassy and chancery compound built on some beautiful property called Sparrow Hills.”

  “I wish we could walk for a while,” I said. “My legs are so stiff. I want to get the blood flowing and really feel this place.”

  “We can. Spaso House is about a mile down. We have an open window to meet the ambassador between three and five. We’ll walk around a bit, at least head toward the Kremlin to get a quick taste of the area, and then we’ll catch a ride over to meet William.”

  As soon as we walked into the lobby of the hotel, a middle-aged colored woman dressed in a lovely gold dress and high heels greeted us. She had the air of a performer, her stance quite erect, her makeup, gold purse, polished nails, and perfect bun-style hair all like something out of a movie.

  “You must be Prescott and Loretta Sweet,” she said with a beaming smile, shaking both of our hands. “My name is Coretta Arle-Titz. I’m an American. The colored colony here in Moscow got wind of your pending venture this way some months back. Our journalist brother, Homer Smith, told us all. You didn’t think we’d let a lovely colored family like yours travel all the way to this foreign land without a contingent of your people being here to greet you, did you?”

  “Why thank you so much, Ms. Arle-Titz!” I said. “These are our children, Ginger and James. And these are our close friends, Bobby and Dorene Ellington, along with their children, Grant and Greta.”

  “Hello to you all!” she said, nodding her head to say hello. “Very nice to meet you! Listen, Mr. Ellington, you don’t mind if we borrow the Sweets for about a half hour or so, do you? We have a group in the bar waiting to meet them. We won’t keep them long. Promise!”

  “Of course not,” said Bobby, tapping me on the shoulder. “Look, Press, why don’t you four go say hello and we’ll get us all checked in. Then you and I can take our little walk. Sound good?”

  “Appreciate that, Bobby. See you in a bit.”

  We followed Coretta through the lobby and into the restaurant bar. There had to be at least thirty colored men and women waiting for us. And as soon as we walked in they began to clap.

  “Everyone!” said Coretta. “Our colony additions have arrived!”

  We began shaking hand after hand as we walked through the group, many of them saying “welcome” and touching us on the shoulders. It was so warm and heartfelt, a lovely surprise to all four of us.

  “Now listen!” said Coretta, handing Loretta and me some full glasses of wine from the bar and two glasses of soda to our children. “The Sweets are very tired, as I’m sure we can all imagine, having made that long-ass journey from the States ourselves, so they don’t have time to meet you all today. However, I’d like for some of you who have been living in the Soviet Union for a while to tell them what brought you here. Maybe your stories will enlighten them, show them how truly free we feel here, as opposed to America. I’ll start!”

  “Go on now, girl!” shouted somebody, as if he’d been drinking for a while.

  “Let us hear it, sista!” said another.

  “I came before the Bolshevik Revolution,” said Coretta, looking at Loretta and me. “I graduated from both the Leningrad and Moscow conservatories of music. I’m married to a piano professor who is Russian. And no one so much as bats an eye. We’re free to be a mixed couple. And even when it comes to my wonderful husband, I make no bones about the fact that I was in a fabulous relationship with a czar before the revolution. Those were the good old days! Before they ran him out of town!”

  “Hush!” said an imposing chocolate-skinned man who was sporting a big grin. “Lord knows who might be listenin’ around the corner over there, Coretta girl!”

  “Since you’re the one hushin’ me, Wayland,” said Coretta, “why don’t you go on and tell ’em about you.” She jokingly fanned her face with her purse, as if she were hot. “Let me quit up in here! While I’m ahead, Loretta girl!”

  She put out her hand for Loretta to grab and the two giggled.

  “You forgot to tell ’em about how you got your start in Harlem,” said Wayland, “and about how you are the best damn singer in Moscow. Our Coretta is being way too humble. Girl can sing in four languages!”

  “Thank you, darlin’ Wayland. Now go on and preach!”

  “I ain’t nobody!” said Wayland. “But I suppose I’m still trying to be. My name’s Wayland Rudd. I came over in 1932 as part of the Negro group of twenty-two who’d been pegged to make a film about America’s race problem. The film was to be called Black and White.”

  “I heard about that,” I said. “Much was written about the film project in all of the papers. Wow! You were a part of that, Mr. Rudd?”

  “Yes, sir! But it never got to be made. President Roosevelt put pressure on the Kremlin to refrain from all propaganda against the U.S. Our race film qualified as just that, so Stalin axed it. He needed America’s machines and technology more than he wanted to expose America’s race problem. So, when all the other actors in the group headed home, including one Langston Hughes, I stayed here. I’m still trying to make it as a stage actor. But believe me, it is as hard here as it is on Broadway.”

  “You’re not the only one from the group who stayed here,” said a handsome brother from across the room.

  “Shame on me!” said Wayland. “How could I have failed to mention my brother over there. That’s Lloyd Patterson, y’all. He was with Langston and the group, too.”

  Lloyd just smiled and humbly waived.

  “That film would have been groundbreaking,” said Coretta. “We’ll have to tell you four more about it later. I’m sure you’re tired. We plan on having a much larger and lengthier gathering for you all soon. We just wanted to welcome you and let you know that you have plenty of family in this . . . damn near . . . other-planet-of-a-country. We all wish Emma Harris were here, too, to welcome you. She’s back in the States now. Moved back last year. She had lived h
ere the longest, since 1905. An outstanding concert soloist!”

  “We called her the Mammy of Moscow,” said Lloyd. “She would have cooked y’all a big Southern meal. She was from Kentucky. She cooked for every Negro in Moscow. Made us ham hocks, fried chicken, corn bread, hash, butter beans, cabbage! And she wasn’t ashamed of being part of the czarist times when she had butlers and a wealthy Russian companion.”

  “Shoot!” said Wayland. “By no means was Mammy bashful about being a part of that czarist ilk. She would boast about that life right in front of these Stalinists, with their anti-bourgeois sentiments. And they left her alone, as they all admired her, too. She would straight up tell you, ‘I’m like a cat with nine lives, honey. I always lands on my feet . . . been doing it all my life wherever I been. These Bolsheviks ain’t gonna kill me.’ ”

  “I remember,” said Lloyd, laughing, “when Mammy was talking about being frustrated with having to live in a rundown apartment because of the Bolsheviks. She said, ‘I would just love to be Stalin’s cook. I’d put enough poison in his first meal to kill a mule.’ ”

  Everybody shouted with laughter, including Loretta and me. James and Ginger just smiled and sipped their drinks.

  “But Mammy actually knew Stalin and he liked her,” said a man from the back. “I’m Oliver Golden, by the way. And since we’re doling out professions, I happen to be an agronomist.”

  We waved at him and he continued.

  “Mammy could get all kinds of food that no one else could find. She had her connections, probably from the peasants who still hadn’t had their land turned into collective farms. They still knew her from the czarist days when she would purchase from them. The collectivization system is one that might leave you newly arrived Sweets wondering why we still like the Soviet Union so much. Simple. They treat us Negroes with such respect. Period.”

  “Go on now, Oliver,” said Coretta. “Tell it.”

  Oliver cleared his throat. “I feel for the peasants, but still, it’s okay for us to be selfish here in Russia and only see things from our perspective after over three hundred years of American slavery and oppression. Yes? At least that’s what George here and I think. Say hello to our new kinfolk, Comrade George.”

  “Hello, Sweet family! I’m George Tynes from Virginia.”

  “Hello,” we said.

  “I’m an agronomist, too, but don’t mind me. I’m not one to carry on about myself. I’m not so natural at it like my singing and acting comrades and sisters here. Just wanna say welcome! Oh, and I agree . . . I miss our Emma’s cooking, too! No one like her!”

  “Nope!” said Coretta, shaking her head the way one does when they miss somebody. “It just ain’t the same here without our Emma, the Mammy of Moscow.”

  * * *

  After our meet and greet, Loretta and I headed upstairs and got the kids settled. Then Bobby and I began our stroll south toward the Red Square. All I could smell was a mixture of engine and cigar smoke. But I marveled at the colorful buildings along the area between our hotel and the Kremlin.

  “It feels so surreal finally being in this country,” I said, “in this place that only seventeen years ago was home to the Bolshevik Revolution. I’m looking at all of these old buildings and trying to visualize Lenin and Trotsky leading their army of peasants against the powerful czars and overthrowing them. Hard to imagine.”

  “Also hard to imagine Lenin approving of Stalin’s current treatment of Trotsky,” said Bobby. “Having him expelled from the country and all. I’m pretty sure it was Trotsky whom Lenin wanted to have succeed him, not Stalin. Lenin definitely didn’t trust Stalin. Even wanted him ousted as secretary general. John Reed would be quite upset were he alive today.”

  “Mmm, I don’t know, Bobby,” I said, studying the white stone building to my right, as our stroll continued. “I’ve read different accounts. Even though Trotsky was Lenin’s right-hand man during the revolution, Lenin wasn’t too fond of him, either, when it came to leading the country. He thought he was the most capable of all the candidates, but believed he was too arrogant. In reality, he wasn’t too fond of anyone succeeding him. He wanted to increase the size of the governing body, the Central Committee, so that no one man would have too much power.”

  “Where is Trotsky by the way, Press? I ask because I’m only guessing you might know. Who am I kidding? Go ahead.”

  “Reports in April said he was forced to leave Barbizon, France. Hang on a second.”

  I touched Bobby on the arm and we stopped, taking a moment to look through a store window at a display that was set up. It was a bunch of loaves of black bread and mustard. I looked further into the store at the shelves that looked empty, save for a few that had more mustard and loaves of bread.

  “Odd,” I said, as we kept looking inside.

  “Indeed.”

  “Like I was saying, and I should whisper this. He was forced to leave Barbizon because police could no longer guarantee his safety. Too many Russian spies.”

  “A life on the run.”

  “Stalin truly seems to want this man gone,” I said. “Trotsky still has so much international support that Stalin probably fears he could return to Moscow someday and regain power.”

  “Speaking of power,” said Bobby, “I think it’s vital that Roosevelt project such to the world for as long as he’s in office. Our work here will play a role in that. After all, we are only fifteen years removed from the Great War.”

  “I hear you,” I said, “but, selfishly, I also have to always believe that the work we’ll be doing, in whichever country, will in some way be helping coloreds, particularly colored Americans.”

  “It will be,” he said. “Look at it this way. The work we’re doing is critical. It involves massaging old wounds. If we can play even a tiny role in keeping this country and ours on good enough terms to influence the temperament, or even the nerve, of our enemies, it could prevent another war from breaking out. That, my friend, is helping the Negro by keeping him, quite bluntly, from dying along with the rest of America. That’s just reality.”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “Besides, Press, if I can eventually rise up and be an ambassador, and then maybe even a senator . . . hell . . . the president . . . I’ll be in a position to influence those social issues we want addressed. Just stick with me and always take comfort in knowing you’re playing a vital role and that you’re doing all you can, Press. Jim Crow is not going to last forever. No way!”

  We began walking again, crossing a wide road that long ago had been a big moat filled with water, which made the Kremlin an inaccessible fortress. I could feel the energy of this place and it felt good. Not one person had taken a second look at me, completely oblivious to my being colored. And it was genuine obliviousness. It was the first time I’d ever felt somewhat invisible, but in the most beautiful of ways.

  “Can you believe these massive churches . . . the onion domes?” said Bobby as we began walking along the stunning, high, redbrick wall that outlined the massive triangular fortress known as the Kremlin. “Everything’s so colorful, Press. But what do they have against broccoli or asparagus? Only onion domes I see!”

  “Amazing,” I said. “It truly is the ‘city of a thousand churches,’ most designed and built by Italians. Hard to believe they’re all closed, museums essentially, per Stalin’s orders, not to mention the many medieval churches that were built by Russians. Those were actually blown up . . . destroyed, also per his orders in 1929.”

  We continued walking along the wall, maybe fifteen feet high at some points and perhaps sixty at others. Finally arriving at Spasskaya Tower, we entered through the famous gate that Napoleon had actually passed through when he occupied Moscow in 1812.

  “Look up at the big clock,” I said once we’d walked through. “Spasskaya Tower’s chimes have been way up there since 1852. The clock itself has been there since the days of Czar Michael Romanov, and I believe that was from 1613 to 1645.”

  “You’re too much, P
ress. But thank you. Who needs a tour guide with you around?”

  “Hey, you told me to learn as much about the Soviet Union as possible.”

  We made our way to the center of the Kremlin and stopped at Cathedral Square. Neither of us said a word as we marveled at the Cathedral of the Dormition, Cathedral of the Archangel, and Cathedral of the Annunciation.

  “All three have shiny, gold onions on top,” said Bobby. “Wonder why?”

  “Don’t know why they’re gold, but there is widespread belief that the onion shapes themselves are supposed to symbolize burning candles. Focus on Dormition because it’s the oldest cathedral.”

  “Which is the Palace of the Facets?” said Bobby. “I’ve read of its being very old, too, perhaps the oldest secular building . . . where the czars held banquets.”

  “It’s the one in between Dormition and Annunciation,” I said, pointing. “Let’s go get a glimpse of Corpus Number One before we have to leave.”

  We headed toward the massive yellow and white building, where all of the powerful State officials had their offices, including Stalin. But when we arrived, no one was allowed to enter, so all we could do was stand outside and marvel at the neoclassical Corpus Number One. I was imagining what I’d read about the inside—the statues, magical courtyard, and stunning oval halls. Even from the outside, it reeked of power, of secrecy, and it somewhat resembled the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., save for the lack of a very high dome.

  “A colleague in Paris said that Stalin’s office is a corner one on the second floor,” said Bobby. “He said men get very nervous when called to the so-called Corner as they are all petrified of Stalin.”

  “It was designed in the 1770s,” I said, looking in every direction, trying to remember what I’d read. “Lenin’s old apartment is in there somewhere.”

  Bobby took in my comment and looked down at his watch. Our quick glimpse of the old buildings would have to suffice for the time being, because it was time to catch a ride to Spaso House. I was looking forward to eventually getting a formal tour of the Kremlin. I was also a little bit nervous about meeting the ambassador. And I didn’t know why.